Torbay’s SEND Partnership has received positive feedback from the Department for Education (DfE) and NHS England (NHSE) following a recent stocktake review, marking an encouraging milestone in the partnership’s improvement journey, while recognising that continued effort is needed to build on this progress.

The stocktake review, carried out in March, was to assess progress of the partnership’s priority impact plan (PIP).

The PIP was created to show how the partnership would make the improvements recommended by inspectors following last year’s SEND local area Ofsted and Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection.

The partnership is made up of Torbay Council, NHS Integrated Care Board and schools and oversees the delivery of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) services across Torbay.

The review also evaluated the effectiveness of partnership working and tested readiness for a forthcoming monitoring inspection.

Discussions and evidence gathering took place with colleagues from across the partnership, including schools and SEND Family Voice Torbay (Torbay’s formal parent carer forum), whose role is to bring the lived experience of parents and carers of children with SEND directly into the design and delivery of services.  

The review focused on the four priority areas of governance, commissioning, multi-agency working, reducing waiting times and the areas for improvement, including communication and preparing for adulthood.

The stocktake letter recognises that Torbay has made good progress across all priority areas and provides encouraging evidence that improvement activity is beginning to have a positive impact for SEND children and young people and their families in Torbay.

The review found clear evidence that the partnership has taken positive steps to address the weaknesses identified during the inspection.

DfE and NHSE reviewers highlighted signs of a more mature and effective partnership, with stronger collaboration between agencies, improved governance arrangements and greater alignment across education, health and care services.

Examples noted during the review included the early impact of the exclusion pilot and the work undertaken to strengthen the Local Education Board. These developments are helping to promote more distributed leadership and greater shared ownership of SEND improvement across the partnership.

Overall, the DfE and NHSE SEND leads concluded that Torbay is on track with implementing many aspects of its improvement plan and is demonstrating examples of good practice.

They noted that, if progress continues, the partnership is well placed to achieve a number of its planned milestones.

While the feedback is positive, the stocktake also recognises that important challenges remain. The partnership has identified three areas requiring particular attention during 2026. These are:

• reducing the time taken to issue new Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs)
• reducing exclusions from secondary schools and
• addressing waiting times for health services.

The review also highlighted the importance of continuing to strengthen communication and co-production with parents, carers, children and young people.  

Improving relationships with families was a key recommendation from the original inspection, and the board has placed a strong focus on improving communication at all levels and embedding co-production across its work.

It recognises that some families do not yet feel the impact of the improvements being made, and the stocktake rightly highlighted the need to continue strengthening communication, co-production and trust with parent carers.

The partnership has recently held engagement days and co-production events with parent carers to ensure families help shape how services improve.

It acknowledges that further work is needed to fully embed these approaches and ensure that the SEND Pledge to families becomes a reality.

There have also been a series of engagement days with young people across Torbay to hear how they would like Torbay’s SEND Pledge to be brought to life in a way that’s meaningful for them.

The SEND pledge is a commitment co-created with children and families to improve the quality and delivery of SEND services in Torbay.

Despite these ongoing challenges, the stocktake has reassured the partnership that it’s heading in the right direction and making meaningful progress towards delivering better outcomes for children and young people with SEND.

The next stocktake review is scheduled for November, with the Ofsted and CQC monitoring inspection expected to take place at any time from January 2027 onwards.

Read the full stocktake letter